The final point made by the Huffington article I mentioned before is that we have evolved, or should I say devolved, to have ridiculously brief attention spans. The other day I watched a show from the fifties, and felt noticeably
calmed by the length of the scenes. They lasted. Then the girls turned on a trailer for a movie they are interested in and my mind became manic with the explosively short clips. I started to hyperventilate from the blast.
A show like Andy of Mayberry depicts a lifestyle where people endured, where decisions came slowly, and the time it took to catch a fish was a satisfying way to spend a Saturday. You walked because there was no hurry, you baked because the smell of cinnamon muffins was as nourishing as the first
warm bite. People sat on their porch swings and watched the leaves fall, or listened to the sound of their own humming.
But those lifestyles have expired, and the world around us expects
things to Happen Now. It is not to say we should all have been born fifty years ago, but rather to understand that the culture around us in not as conducive to patience as it was for our grandparents.
Still we can choose to hold the Urgency at bay, and invite ourselves to lengthen our own ability to persevere. If our marriage is not thriving today, maybe it is worth waiting until it is. If a muffin or a fish are worth minutes or hours of seemingly fruitless forbearance, maybe a marriage is too.
